Portland mayor Sam Adams recently claimed that, for all the value that Portland’s bike infrastructure had brought to Portland, the entire cost of building

all of this bicycle infrastructure in Portland was equivalent to the cost of a single mile of highway.

That startling claim aroused the interest of the good folks at PolitiFact, the non-partisan fact-checker:

Portland’s biking infrastructure is the stuff of legends. For the people who support it, we’re Biketown U.S.A. — the city that boasts (at least among medium and large cities) the highest bike commuter rate. For those who are less into that title, our investments in cycling paths and signs are monetary drains on the city budget.

You’d think, then, given the strong feelings, that Portland has made significant investments to get a significant infrastructure.

But something Mayor Sam Adams said recently caught our attention. In a video on Streetfilms.org, Adams touts our biking culture while adding that we built our bike network for about the same amount of cash that a mile of highway would set us back.

“You know in 1993 we weren’t the bicycling capital of America,” he says. “Seventeen years later, for the equivalent cost of a single mile of freeway, we have a bike infrastructure.”

One Response to "For the equivalent cost of a single mile of freeway, we have a bike infrastructure."

Robert

March 21, 2011 at 8:48 pm

Don't forget that the single mile of highway at $20MM to $80MM is totally worthless. You'd probably need 5 to 10 miles of highway for it to be at all useful. Whereas the bike network has full function for the $60MM.